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Christchurch Meccano Club
Christchurch Meccano Club was founded in 1929, and is the oldest continuously running Meccano club in the world. The club is unfortunately not as busy as it was in the heydays of Meccano, but there is a reliable and growing membership of Meccano enthusiasts who meet every month.
We have moved!
After many years in Woolston, we have found a new home right in the heart of Christchurch, at the Cranmer Bridge Club on Cranmer Square.
The location is shown above – it's the very old red building at the south-west corner of Cranmer Square. The address of this building is 25 Armagh St, but as you can see from the map above the vehicle entrance is actually around the corner on Cranmer Square (the entrance is shown with house number 3!). There is some parking off-street and plenty more on Cranmer Square if needed.
Join us!
The Christchurch Meccano Club meets on the first Friday of every month except January, at the Cranmer Bridge Club, Cranmer Square. We start around 7:30pm. Visitors are most welcome, bring your models or part-completed projects along! Drop us an email if you like, to find out what's going on.
Recent meetings
To see pictures and a report from any of the recent meetings of the Christchurch Meccano Club, click on the appropriate button below:
History of the club
There is a huge amount of historical documentation relating to the club, dating back to before its creation in 1929. We are starting to scan and upload the most interesting parts of this documentation, so come back to check for more history regularly!The Coupling
Here are a few issues of The Coupling, no less than the "Official Organ of the Christchurch Meccano Club" according to the subtitles. The first issue is from December 1936. The writing is clearly from a different era, and highlights include the sanctimonious drivel of the first couple of pages in issue 1, and the list of parts available to Club members shown in the third issue. Lead weights, sand and wood rollers, signal arms, and a GRB were all available to the club's members. On the same page, there is a helpful suggestion to cut out a rectangle of the paper and cover "liberally with treacle and arsenic", giving you a "flypaper of excellent quality".We can only wonder whether this kind of helpful advice to the lads in the club might have had something to do with the reported drop in membership from a high of 85 in the early 30's to a minimum of 12. However, by the end of 1938 things look a lot more healthy, including friendly but intense competition between the Club and the Ashburton Meccano Club, and mention of a newly-formed Hagley Park Meccano Club.
The Coupling, December 1936 issue (click on a page to view it)
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